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Two years before, fresh from the inspiration of his years in Germany and of his German master, he had composed his Alan Breck Overture. It would have been well done, even for a man many years his senior, and it quickly won a place on the programmes of the leading orchestra's of the country.
And while we ate and drank and smoked, and the tables around us filled with people whose ripples and bursts of laughter rose over the orchestra's festive throb, and corks kept popping everywhere, he told me where they were going, these gay revellers, for their Christmas Day to London, Brussels, Berlin and Vienna, Paris, Nice, Monte Carlo, Algiers.
The palms, and flowers, and lights which decorated the room; the orchestra's river of dance-music; the men, all in the black livery which on the surface marks the final conquest of civilization over barbarism; the beautiful gowns, the sparkling jewels, and the white shoulders and arms of the ladies all these made me wonder if I had not been transported to some Mayfair or Newport, so pictorial, so decorative, so charged with art, it seemed to be.
"But now you put it that way, he doesn't sound like a worthy cause a bit." The men laughed, though Joy's words hadn't sounded particularly witty to herself. "I'm going to abjure duty now," she went on hurriedly. "The orchestra's playing that thing people can dance me to " She held her hand and arm gracefully high, in the old minuet pose, and laughed up at Clarence.
He took from his coat pocket a rose a drooping, yellow, velvet, odorous rose, that hung its head in the foul atmosphere of that tainted rathskeller like a virgin bowing before the hot breath of the lions in a Roman arena. Miss Carrington's penetrating but musical laugh rose above the orchestra's rendering of "Bluebells." "Oh, say!" she cried, with glee, "ain't those poky places the limit?
By the time ice-cream and cake arrived, about half the guests had either been initiated into the mysteries by Fanchon or were learning by imitation, and the education of the other half was resumed with the dancing, when the attendant ladies, unconscious of what was happening, withdrew into the house for tea. "That orchestra's a dead one," Fanchon remarked to Penrod.
And still, for pain, her thoughts went throbbing on about Jenny whenever, in happiness, she had seen a home and Alf and a baby and the other plain clear consequences of earning his love of taking him from Jenny. And then the curtain rose, the darkness fell, and the orchestra's tune slithered into nothing.
He went to the farthest end of the gardens, where there was deep shadow, and a seaward outlook over the cliff wall. There the glare of electric bulbs and blazing doorways was softened, and the orchestra's music was modulated. Presently he was startled by a ripple of laughter at his shoulder, low and rich in musical vibrance. "Ah, it is not like this in your gray, fog-wrapped country."
"The minute the curtain goes down on the first act change this forest to the drawing-room scene, and don't make any noise hammering. If you have to hammer, do it while the orchestra's playing. How does it look?" she asked anxiously, turning to Patty. "Beautiful," said Patty. "I'd scarcely recognize it."
On the first night, the real dog bit Kelly's real ankles, and in real anger he kicked the real animal by a real mistake into the orchestra's real drum. So much for realism as practiced by Charles Reade! There was still something to remind him of the experiment in Rachael, the circus goat.
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